


Songs of love And songs of death And songs to set men free

by rosa_himmelblau



Series: The Roadhouse Blues [36]
Category: Wiseguy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-25
Updated: 2020-08-25
Packaged: 2021-03-07 01:15:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,898
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26108566
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosa_himmelblau/pseuds/rosa_himmelblau
Summary: Sonny knows what Vinnie needs.
Series: The Roadhouse Blues [36]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1069713





	Songs of love And songs of death And songs to set men free

Vinnie sat on the a cold bench, looking alternately at the ocean and at Sonny, who was looking at the ocean. Sonny was also walking toward it, his shoes off, his jeans rolled up to his knees. When the cold salt water hit his feet, Vinnie winced in sympathetic response, though he didn't see Sonny react at all, except to walk further into the water.

Vinnie idly wondered how long they were going to stay there.

The day before, Sunday, Sonny had left the apartment early in the day and not come back until nearly five in the evening. He walked in, shut off the stereo. "C'm'on, the cab's waiting." He pulled on Vinnie's sweatshirt sleeve, urging him to stand up.

"Cab?" Vinnie felt as if he'd come in in the middle of a movie. "What cab? Where are we going? Why are we taking a cab?" Sonny jerked on his sleeve again and he got to his feet.

"The airport." Sonny appraised Vinnie's appearance, shaking his head. "Go take a shower, put on something—clean." He gave Vinnie a push toward the bathroom.

"Why are we going to the airport?" Sonny shoved him again and reluctantly Vinnie started moving. "Quit pushing me! Why are we going to the airport? You suddenly need my help to pick up girls?"

"We've got a nine-thirty flight to JFK." Sonny was following Vinnie, probably to be sure he did what he was told.

"JF—we're going to New York? Why are we going to New York?"

Sonny pushed him out of the way, turned on the water in the bathtub, bending over to test and adjust the temperature. "Get your clothes off, get in the shower."

"Sonny, why—"

Sonny straightened up, looked him in the eye. " **I'm** going on business. **You're** going because I can't find anyone to water you while I'm gone." He snapped the waistband of Vinnie's sweat pants. "Will you get a move on?"

Vinnie showered, washed his hair, tried to think of what they could be going to New York for. He couldn't come up with anything. When he turned off the water, Sonny handed him a towel, sat watching while he dried off and brushed his teeth. Sonny handed him his razor. He didn't say anything, and Vinnie didn't say anything. He'd thought they had worn out the shaving argument, but maybe not. Vinnie took the razor, though. He didn't feel like having it right that minute. He closed his eyes and managed to remove most of the hair from his face without cutting himself.

Sonny had his clothes out waiting for him, was standing impatiently in the doorway of his room, watching while Vinnie put on his underwear, his jeans. Vinnie asked again. "Why are we going to New York? What business do you have in New York?"

"It's nothing you need to worry about."

Vinnie processed that—quickly, as he pulled on his socks, looked around for his boots. "Is this about Rudy?" Sonny didn't say anything, just handed him a shirt—a dark blue button-down he always liked to see Vinnie in. "Do you want to talk about this on the plane?" Vinnie asked. "Or would you rather clear it up now, while there's nobody around to hear us?"

Sonny went over to the bedside table, picked up Vinnie's watch and pulled out the stem to reset it. "You know how your stepfather found me?"

"Yeah, some guy recognized you and—"

"Yeah, yeah. Well, he contacted me—"

Again, Vinnie felt like he wasn't tracking. "How did he know how to—"

"Will you shut up?" Sonny demanded. "Just shut up, I'll tell you what you want to know. I don't know how he found me again, but now he wants us to go into business together. So, I'm meeting with him."

 _Go into business together meant be paid a king's ransom to keep his mouth shut._ Vinnie wasn't sure what meeting with him meant. He wasn't sure he wanted to know. Still, "To work out the details?" Was that another euphemism? Vinnie had said it and he wasn't even sure.

Sonny nodded, handed Vinnie his watch. "Yeah. Get your jacket, it's cold there this time of year."

"I remember. What kind of details are we talking about?" He really wasn't sure he wanted to know.

"Got nothing to do with you."

"Sonny."

"It depends how things go," Sonny replied diffidently. He wasn't meeting Vinnie's eyes.

"Sonny—"

Sonny put his hand on Vinnie's arm, squeezed lightly. "You want me to lie to you?"

"No."

"Then quit asking questions! This isn't your problem—" Then, his voice softening, "He doesn't know about you." He touched Vinnie's hair, his cheek. "C'm'on, c'm'on, put your watch on." Vinnie did, and Sonny grabbed his arm. "C'm'on, will you, this cab ride's gonna end up costing more than the flight."

"Sonny, I gotta pack—"

Impatiently—and that was such a redundant description, Sonny was nearly always impatient, and now he was impatience incarnate. Still, impatiently, he went to his dresser, opened the door, and pulled out a stack of cash. He peeled off twenty hundred dollar bills. "Put that in your wallet."

"Sonny, I got money."

Sonny stuck his hand in Vinnie's back pocket, fished out his wallet, stuck the money in it, and put it back in Vinnie's pocket.

"There, now you're packed. Now come on."

They were walking out the door when Sonny had asked, "I don't know how long this is gonna take. Do you want to stay here?" His voice was nearly a whisper.

"No," Vinnie had said.

Vinnie had known something weird was going on. They'd taken a cab from JFK to what had to be the worst hotel Vinnie had ever seen in his life. It was almost seven in the morning, and though they'd both slept on the plane, Vinnie was still tired, and he'd have bet Sonny was too. But instead of sleeping a few hours, Sonny had stuck the room key in his pocket and left the hotel, walked the block and half to the beach. And Vinnie, wondering if he was stupid, crazy, or both, followed, trying to put the pieces together.

They were staying—are you ready for this one?—in Coney Island.

Sonny had a cat's instinct for finding comfort. In all their travelling around, he'd only picked two or three even questionable places, and those generally because they had swimming pools. This place was his one strike, but it was a beaut. Vinnie was appalled, but he kept his mouth shut. He was too tired to argue.

So they went to the beach. Late April, early on a Monday morning, and an overcast, threatening-to-rain sky to boot made for a deserted beach, and besides that it was unseasonably cold, probably only about forty degrees. And Sonny was walking in ice cold water. What the fuck was going on?

Vinnie didn't know. He lit a cigarette and thought about breakfast and watched the seagulls who were watching him, hoping he'd come to provide them with breakfast. They were too savvy to go after the cigarette butts he tossed away.

There was a place not too far that served a great breakfast, but he'd gone there a lot and so could never go there again because someone who might not believe he was dead could be walking around with a picture of him, showing it to anyone who might ever have served him food, a waitress he'd smiled at might remember him, maybe. It was crazy, but it might be true. Maybe there was someplace closer, someplace he'd never been, where he could get some eggs and maybe a steak.

The water was splashing at Sonny's jeans, even rolled up. For a minute Vinnie wondered if he was going to maybe just walk out into the ocean, if he, Vinnie, was going to sit there and calmly watch as Sonny killed himself yet again right in front of his face. He stood up and threw his cigarette on the sand, took a couple of steps toward the water, but—

Where was he going? To wrestle Sonny out of the water? Sonny might be courting hypothermia, but he wasn't desperate, he wasn't looking to kill himself. Vinnie sat back down, lit another cigarette. None of this made any sense. _If this guy knows where Sonny is, why not make him come to us instead of coming here where anybody might recognize either of us? There's something else going on. I don't know why Sonny decided he had to leave the relative safety of an apartment that overlooks the Pacific Ocean to fly across the country so he can walk in the Atlantic Ocean. And I don't know why I'm sitting here watching him. But I bet if I asked Sonny—and could get him to answer me—he'd have an answer to give._

Vinnie got up, dropped his cigarette, and went looking for a someplace to get breakfast.

Six blocks later he found a diner that served a halfway decent breakfast special. Vinnie had two of them, three cups of coffee, another cigarette. There was a pay phone on the back wall; if he picked it up, if he dialed Frank's number, how long would it take for Frank to get there? _Frank would have a brain hemorrhage sitting in traffic, trying to get to me; if I called Frank, it would probably end up killing him._

_Nice story. Why don't you tell yourself another one, like maybe how if Frank came to the beach, seagulls would attack him, drag him to the ocean and drown him? You aren't calling him because you're a coward; get used to it and quit lying to yourself._

Vinnie paid his bill and walked back to the beach. Sonny was sitting on the bench, using his socks to dry his feet.

"You must be freezing," Vinnie said, sitting down next to him.

"Worth it," Sonny answered. "You had breakfast?"

"Yeah."

"Good." Sonny put on his shoes sans socks, left the socks laying on the ground. _Evidence,_ Vinnie thought, stifling a laugh. _Those are evidence—_

Sonny looked at his watch.

"What time are you meeting—what's his name, anyway?"

"You don't want to know." Sonny held out his hand and Vinnie took the cigarettes out of his pocket and gave them to him. Sonny tapped one out, lit it, offered Vinnie back the pack.

"Keep it." His own lighter, but not his own cigarettes. Cigarettes were the one thing he wouldn't buy Vinnie, and even though he'd started back smoking regularly nearly a year ago, he wouldn't buy them for himself, either; he smoked Vinnie's. "I don't want to know what time you're meeting him, or I don't want to know his name?"

Sonny took a deep drag on his cigarette. "Kid, you don't want to know anything about it. Just spend the afternoon at the movies, or sight-seeing or whatever the fuck and meet me at the Empire State Building at four or so."

"Sonny, are you going to—"

Sonny looked him in the eye, and Vinnie saw that he was very tired. "You want to come with me and help?"

 _No. No, no._ He didn't say the words, didn't say anything.

Didn't matter. Sonny smiled, patted his cheek. "Then don't ask. Place you found for breakfast, was it any good?"

"No." Vinnie tried to smile. _Sonny's going to go kill some guy. Some blackmailer, some— Sonny's going to kill him. You want to go along?_

_No._

"Figures."

For one startled moment Vinnie thought Sonny was responding to his thoughts. "It's nearby. The eggs weren't bad," he amended. "Skip the hash browns."

Sonny nodded. "Let's go."

Vinnie watched Sonny eat breakfast, drinking another cup of coffee and trying to avoid thinking. "How much does he want?" He didn't want to ask the question, but he couldn't help it, and for some reason he kept thinking of Sonny's socks still laying under a bench near the beach. _Evidence. Of what? You think Sonny's going to bring him back here and whack him where he left his socks? Jesus, you are going crazy._

"It doesn't matter, we'll work it out."

When he'd finished his breakfast, Sonny left to catch the train into the city. Vinnie considered going with him, but he thought he wanted some time to himself.

He was wrong. Vinnie didn't know what he did want, but it wasn't time walking around avoiding making eye contact with strangers in case they turned out not to be strangers. So, he ended up taking the train to the city an hour later. He hit the Loews on 19th Street where he spent half the afternoon alternately sleeping and eating popcorn while some movie about a man whose girlfriend disappeared without a trace played over and over. _She's not dead, buddy, she's hiding someplace. If you can find her socks, you can solve the mystery._ Before the end credits were finished, he'd forgotten how the story had ended.

It was raining when he left the theatre, the gray day turned dark as dusk, and it was hard for Vinnie to reorient himself, to realize he had, in fact, left the theatre and come back into the real world.

It was already after three, so Vinnie walked directly to the Empire State Building to meet Sonny. Idly he wondered how many people had ever known about Sonny's obsession with that building. Not very many, he'd bet; when he and Sonny had come there, Sonny would stand with his hands pressed against the cement barricades or wrapped around the protective iron bars, staring out at—Vinnie never knew exactly what Sonny was staring at, he simply seemed bewitched by the view. There was a dream out there, and it lived just off in the horizon, any horizon, but it breathed more powerfully in that view.

Vinnie never said anything, would never say anything. What could he say, even if he wanted to? He'd once stood staring at the Washington Monument, dreaming his own dream—and forcing Frank to look at it with him, hand over his heart. He had no mind to telling Sonny's secrets. And it was so intimate, Vinnie couldn't imagine Sonny telling anyone else; he'd barely told Vinnie, except in the way he devoured the city with his eyes. And for the first time on this trip, Vinnie found himself feeling happy, in anticipation of the voyeuristic pleasure of watching Sonny's secret, giddy love for New York City.

When the elevator doors opened, Vinnie got off, looking around for Sonny. What he saw instead was his conscience.

Then Frank had Vince in a bear hug that left him gasping, breathless, dry-sobbing. Frank was talking to him, pulling him by the arm, back into the elevator, down on the street, dragging him along like a child who'd pitched a fit in the grocery store and had to be taken outside. And Vinnie, afraid of Frank seeing Sonny, let himself be pulled along.

They were on the street, standing in the rain, when Frank stopped, grabbed him by the shoulders, and gave him a good shake. "Stop saying that!"

Vince didn't know what he was talking about, hadn't realized he was saying anything at all until he went to apologize and saw the look on Frank's face. Since there wasn't really any way of apologizing for apologizing, Vince just shut up and let himself be pulled along until they got to a parking garage. He didn't know where Frank thought he was taking him, but Vince knew that, wherever it was, he couldn't go there. "I can't, Frank, I can't—I can't go back—Frank—"

"Jesus, Vince, we're just going to my car," Frank snapped, and then so gently it was good as a caress, "we're just going to my car."

So Vinnie went.

Sitting in Frank's car in the parking garage, one ridiculous thought kept spinning around in Vinnie's head: _Frank's alive. Frank's alive._ Which made no sense because of course Frank was alive; there had been no question that Frank was alive. He was the one who was supposed to be dead. Still, Frank's living, breathing aliveness seemed like a miracle.

"Vince." Frank seemed to be having trouble expressing himself. "Vinnie—" A lot of questions, probably, which made Vinnie wonder if he had a lot of answers. "Where have you been?"

That seemed easy enough; he'd been in San Francisco. But he wasn't sure if he should tell Frank that or not. _Why are you thinking about lying to Frank?_ The answer was easy enough, too: Sonny. Frank couldn't know about Sonny. That had always been his reason for not contacting Frank. "Moving around," Vinnie said. He wanted a cigarette. He found the pack in his pocket but didn't take one out; Frank didn't like people smoking in his car.

"Moving around where? Vince, **where have you been**?"

Well. Obviously he should have pressed Sonny harder to get details about the things he couldn't remember, but he hadn't expected there to be anybody else who wanted the answers. "I've been all over the place, Frank, staying under the radar."

"Vince, so help me if you don't give me some kind of answer, I'm going to drag you out of this car—! Where have you and Steelgrave been hiding?"

Vinnie didn't even think to about what he did next, he just did it. "Frank," he said as condescendingly as he could, "Sonny's dead. Remember?"

For a second he thought Frank really was going drag him out of the car, or try, anyway. "Well, this morning I had coffee with him, or someone who could be his twin, and he's the one who told me you were going to be here, so I'd call that one helluva coincidence, wouldn't you?" Before Vince could answer, he added, "And will you please just light one of those damn things instead of mangling the pack?"

Vinnie looked down at the mess in his lap; he'd been tearing the cigarette pack apart. "Sorry, Frank." But he wasn't thinking about the torn paper, he was thinking about what Frank had said, that he'd had coffee with Sonny that morning, and everything fell into place. Sonny had scammed him, and how perfect was it that Sonny had gotten as good at playing him as he had ever been at playing Sonny? Was that poetic justice or maybe just symmetry? The right-now, hop-to-it-ness of the trip had given Vinnie little time to think, and the hints that Sonny was planning to kill a guy—something he knew Vinnie, who used to be a fed, after all, would want no part of—had given him the wrong thing to think about when he did think about the trip. Probably the one true thing they had done was go to the beach.

Frank was still talking to him. ". . . why do you think I'm here, anyway? Because Steelgrave called me and told me **you'd** be here."

Vince closed his eyes, took a cigarette from what was left of the pack, and felt his pockets for his lighter, belatedly noticing Frank had punched the dashboard lighter in for him. After he'd taken a long drag on the cigarette, he looked at Frank and started talking.

It was the same story he'd told Roger, pretty much, starting back at the beginning with the ending, the part of the story Frank already knew. It was the only story he had, though he wished he could make up a new one. His mother called; her friend's son, Tommy, the priest, was missing—no, he'd been "disappeared," which was a different thing altogether. Vinnie was a federal agent, could he please change this water into wine—

Frank laughed, and Vince realized he'd said the words aloud for the first time, though he'd been thinking them for some time now. "How's that walking on water going?" Frank asked.

"I nearly drowned," Vince answered, and they both laughed, and Vince felt better. He went on talking. A knock on the door, guys saying they had info on Tommy, and then they were on him, and everything after that was a sepia-toned, blood-tinged movie of someone else's life. "I always wondered about whoever came up with that whole sensory-deprivation thing; to me it just sounded like torture, and you know something? I was right. I was gone eight months," Vince didn't look in his wallet, though the number was written there, Sonny had written it on a piece of paper the last time he'd asked, to make sure it **was** the last time he asked. "When I woke up in the hospital, I thought I was dead, that the nurse was an angel. Heaven was very clean, and they let me sleep a lot."

"Vince," Frank began again, but Vinnie interrupted him. He knew what the question was going to be—again—and he wasn't ready to give the answer, not until he'd laid the groundwork for it.

"Frank, can we—I gotta get out of this car, my legs are cramping up." And as Frank was saying—whatever he was saying—Vinnie got out, arched his back, then stood leaning his ass against the cold car. He’d spent too much time sitting in cars—well, one car—for him to find it comfortable for very long.

Frank got out more slowly, looking at him, patient, walking around to his side of the car, standing sideways next to him. Looking at him. Waiting. Vince took a deep breath. "It was Rudy's guys that found me—apparently he paid somebody a lot of money for me. I had a fever, and was malnourished, so they looked after me until I was well again, then Rudy and Pooch took me home. To my home—I dunno how long I was there, they kept me pretty doped up—" Vince held out his scarred wrist. "I remember the night I did this—" Frank was saying something but Vince went on talking, he couldn't listen to either Frank's pity or his anger, not yet, not without everything out in the open. "I remember wanting to die so it would quit hurting. I just kept hearing Sonny's voice, telling me I owed him. So Rudy went and got him for me." It sounded so stupid, Vinnie laughed. Frank, he noticed, did not.

"How did Rudy know Steelgrave was still alive?"

Vinnie shook his head. "You'd have to ask him. I'm not even sure he told Sonny, and nobody tells me anything. They spent a couple of years negotiating—"

"Negotiating what?" Frank snapped.

"Negotiating me." It sounded insane. If Vince hadn't known that, he'd have been able to tell by the way Frank was staring at him with his mouth open.

"Negotiating you." The flat tone asked a question Vince didn't know how to answer, made him feel defensive. He moved away from the car, walked around it a couple of times before returning to stand pretty much where he'd been standing.

"Yeah, well, it's not like I couldn't leave Sonny if I wanted to." _Or that I haven't, a time or two._ But he didn't mention that to Frank. "It's more like Rudy wanted to kill Sonny and put me someplace where the walls are soft. The hallucinations freaked him out, and us sneaking out in the middle of the night pissed him off. And he really didn’t like the other stuff."

"What other stuff? Why were you sneaking out in the middle of the night? " It sounded even crazier when Frank repeated it. No wonder he and Sonny had spent two years screaming at each other, they'd been living in their own private lunatic asylum. How had Vinnie not noticed this?

He had to explain, even if he didn’t really have an explanation. So, pacing back and forth in front of Frank, Vinnie went back to that night, Sonny waking him up to tell him they were leaving (but he left out how his first thought had been he'd come to his apartment to tell him they were blowing Atlantic City, going to Paris, how he'd probably thought that because he'd dreamed it three times the week before Sonny died). He gave Frank more details than he'd given Roger, he talked about going to Maine for a week before they started heading west. He talked about not being too sure what was going on until, at last, he **was** sure, that Sonny was alive, that he himself had nearly died, that they weren't just moving around, they were running from something that might or might not be after them—

"Vince. Why didn't you call me?" Frank's pleading words stopped his. Vinnie walked further away, into the garage's deep shadows.

"Frank, the first thing I did was try to call you, but the phone was dead! Rudy told me I needed to get better before I could talk to anybody else—I think he thought I was going to die. I was supposed to just stay at the house—"

"What house?" Frank asked. "Vinnie, stop hiding back there. What house? The house in Brooklyn, your mother's house?"

Vinnie came back over to lean against the car. "Yeah, that's where they took me after the clinic. 'Familiar surroundings,' the doctor said. So that's where we went, and Rudy an' Pooch an' me stayed there . . . for a while. I don't know how long. And then Rudy left, and that must've been when he went and got Sonny . . . ." Vince heard his own voice trailing off, and besides everything else, it was embarrassing that he couldn't just tell a straight beginning-middle-end story; it was like putting together a puzzle, not with missing pieces, but with pieces that kept changing so while they fit, the picture no longer made sense. "They wouldn't let me call you, they wouldn't let me leave, they wouldn't let me die." He started to say that Sonny had come and gotten him out, but decided not to. Instead he found his mangled cigarette pack, pulled one out.

"At first, I kept thinking every day that I'd call you tomorrow, as soon as I knew what I was going to say, as soon as I knew exactly what was going on, as soon as I could say, 'Frank, I'm OK, things are fine.' But I knew that wouldn't work, that you'd trace the call, that you'd find us, and then what? I couldn't go back—" _And if you showed up, Sonny would've either disappeared or—_ Vinnie's mind refused to go down the path of that 'or.' And then what? "You don't know how many times I started to, dialed most of your number and hung up. I knew they'd told you I was dead—"

"And you knew I didn't believe it," Frank put in, a gentle reprimand.

"Frank, I'm selfish, I **counted** on you not believing it. As much as I wanted you to let go so you could have some peace, a part of me was glad you wouldn't let go." It was only fair he tell Frank the truth, that he let Frank know what he meant to him. Frank reached over, put his hand on Vince's arm. "I wanted you to believe no matter what. It's like you were the keeper of—of the parts of me that're gone, the stuff I had to jettison to stay afloat. The me I could've been, if things'd been different, if I'd been smarter."

"Smarter?" Frank repeated. "What are you talking about, smarter?"

"You know, smarter." Vince blew out a stream of smoke. "Used my head. Made better decisions. But I can't go back and undo anything, and I've finally figured that out."

"So you think a career as Steelgrave's—what, valet? Chauffeur? Constitutes a better use of your brains?"

"Frank," Vince said gently, trying not to laugh, "I'm not working for Sonny. I'm living with him." No use getting into the particulars; let him think what he wanted—although the problem with Frank was that what he'd think was exactly what he said, that Vince was Sonny's employee. Frank didn't say anything, and Vince couldn't resist adding, "He didn't risk Rudy popping him so he'd have somebody to wash his car."

The look of utter betrayal on Frank's face, the disappointment, didn't come as a surprise, but it still hurt. "Goddammit, Vince, Steelgrave—"

Vince cut him off. He couldn't listen to a recitation of Sonny's sins, not in Frank's voice. "I know, Frank. Everything you can say, and some things even you don't know about. I know. What do you want me to say? I don't care? I **do** care, and so what? You ought'a be happy, Frank. I finally learned that life was a relative venture."

"—called me in the middle of the night last night to ask if I wanted you back. He's left you here with me."

That Frank wasn't above this spitefulness actually made Vinnie feel better. "Yeah, that much I figured out. But it's not like I can go with you, unless you're planning on keeping me hidden in your attic. Paul didn't want me back before I got my brains scrambled by fevers and shunning, you think he wants me now?"

"No—" Frank wasn't finished, but Vinnie cut him off.

"So what does that leave that I know how to do? Go into the record business? Move back to my old neighborhood, open a garage, listen to the neighbors whisper behind my back and know they're worried if they say the wrong thing, I'll have 'em dusted?"

"Those aren't your only options," Frank said, and then, "those aren't really options at all."

"Yeah, I know, I can't go into the record business." Vince wondered when it had become necessary to tell Frank you were being sarcastic. But Frank was shaking his head.

"You can't— Rudy didn't tell you?"

"Tell me what?"

"By now I'm sure everyone knows you're an OCB agent. Your mother—"

Whatever Frank was saying disappeared into the buzzing in Vinnie's head. No wonder Rudy didn't know what to do with him; his mother had outed him. No, worse than that: she'd made Frank do it.

For most of his life, Vinnie had believed that his mother was right and if he differed with her, he was wrong; it was as simple as that, and as painful.

During his captivity, he'd been angry with her—furiously, wildly angry; she'd been at the top of the list of people he blamed for his abduction, since he'd only gotten involved in the whole mess because of her, because he wanted her to be proud of him. And after Rudy brought him home, he was still angry, angry with all of them for not getting him out sooner. He didn't care that he was being unreasonable, he didn't care—they'd **abandoned him**! And even though they hadn't, he felt abandoned, and hurt, and angry. Vinnie felt that as though they'd gone on with their lives without him, as though he'd never been there.

It was one more example of belief vs. truth, with belief winning out no matter how hard Vinnie tried to believe the truth instead. And unlike his belief in Sonny's death, he had no daily, living proof of the truth to remind him and remind him until the truth finally won.

His mother had forced Frank to out him. For the first time Vinnie got it. It wasn't that his mother was right and he was wrong, or even that his mother was wrong and he was right. It was that their versions of right and wrong didn't match, and maybe they never would. And that was all right. She'd done her best, and she'd done it for him.

Vinnie sighed, came to stand next to Frank, leaning against the car with him, leaning against Frank. "Forget about it. What difference does it make? It's not the mob I gotta worry about, it's not the mob that had me grabbed—we both know that. We don't know for sure who did it—" He turned to look at Frank, suddenly feeling a desperate longing to come home, to be Vinnie Terranova again, to have his life back. "Do we?"

"We know Steichen is dead," Frank paused, smiling a strange smile. "As much as **we** know anybody's dead, anyway. There isn't anything you aren't telling me about **him,** is there Vince?"

Vinnie couldn't help laughing at that. "No, Frank, swear to God."

"Good. And to the best of my knowledge, Masters is locked up someplace with soft walls."

"And if he wasn't, you think they'd tell you? And what about Getzloff? She's still out doing her patriotic duty, right?" Vinnie spat the words. "And, for that matter, what do we know about who else might've been involved, do we know—anything?"

Frank shook his head. "We don't know what we don't know."

"Wittgenstein," Vince said, smiling. "Yeah. 'And somebody's on the next plane to El Salvador.' I said that to Vernon Biggs. I had no idea it was gonna be me. Is Kay Gallagher still in the nuthouse?" _Along with Susan._ Vince didn't say it, but he knew Frank heard it.

"Yes." And Frank could say that positively because he'd checked, and on Susan, too, most likely, because that was who Frank was: he tallied the casualties: missing, wounded, dead. He kept track and he said a prayer and he put flowers on the graves because that's who he was. That's why Vince knew he could trust him with his soul.

"They came for me once, Frank. They came for me, and they got me, and we don't even know who we are."

"I've tried to find—"

"Don't!" Vinnie's shout echoed in the garage. He lowered his voice. "Please, God, Frank, promise me you won't ask anybody anymore questions about me, promise you won't— Please. Pretend I'm dead, just like I've been doing."

"Stop being so damn melodramatic!" Frank hollered at him. "And stop being so—limited!"

"Limited?" Vinnie just looked at him.

"C'm'on, come with me." Frank took him by the arm and pulled him along, over to where they could see the outside world. "Look!" Frank ordered, pointing him toward the 59th Street Bridge. The view wasn't exactly the one the Observatory Platform offered, but it was enough to get Frank's point across. "You've still got that money Roger gave you—oh, don't give me that innocent look, I know there was more. You've got a whole new identity, don't you? So what's the damn problem?" Frank demanded. His anger had finally escaped. It felt like a blessing, it felt like being loved. "It's a big world out there, but you act like you're in prison! Like your only options are going back to Brooklyn or being Steelgrave's—"

Frank's yelling stuttered, stalled. "Friend," Vince put in. It wasn't a euphemism, or a facade; when had Sonny ever called him anything else?

"Friend," Frank spat, as though Sonny had somehow ruined the word for him. "There's no reason for you to—"

"Frank. Please listen to me." He waited; Frank said nothing, he was standing close to Vince, staring at the zipper on his jacket. "I am with Sonny because I want to be. No, wait. Within the rather limited circumstances of my life, I want to be. I can't honestly tell you whether I would want to be with him if I didn't have to live under another name, cut off from—" he was going to say family, rethought for half a second, then realized the word was just right, even though he wasn't so much talking about his mother and aunts and uncles and cousins. "—from my family. You know this is my only option, to live under another name and tell the world I'm someone else—" Frank started to say something, but Vinnie didn't let him. "Please. Listen." And Frank subsided. "It seems to me that I have three options, if I'm going to live this life. Do you agree this is the only practical life, living under another name?"

"Yes." Frank's voice was nearly swallowed by the wind.

"Good, because I really don't want to debate that. So, I can find some nice girl who never heard of the OCB, woo her and wed her, and hope I can remember all the lies I tell her, and hope she doesn't mind my nightmares, or the fact that I've tried to kill myself, or—" He shook his head. "It's one thing to know I'll never see any of my family again; it's another thing to try to have an intimate relationship with someone without ever being able to talk about my family. You think well, what could it possibly hurt to mention Pete, or Danny, or—but Danny's death was in the paper, and so was Pete's. What were the odds in Seattle, that I'd walk into the church of a priest who not only knew Pete, but who had had long conversations with him—about me? But it happened. So it's a real risk, and one thing we both know: being with someone but not being yourself is lonely, lonelier than being alone.

"Which brings us to being alone. I'm not very good at being alone anymore, I don't like it. And the thing is, I have a choice. I know you're disappointed in me, Frank—"

"My disappointment or lack thereof doesn't matter," Frank said softly, and Vince nearly laughed.

"Frank, if that was true I **could** have just called and told you I was OK. I think your disappointment probably scares me more than La Mano Blanco and La Cosa Nostra put together, and I think you know that. I know what you think of Sonny, and I'm not going to argue with you because you're not wrong. But I have a question for you, a serious question: so what? You can't say nothing is more important than justice prevailing and Sonny being imprisoned, because if you believed that, we wouldn't be standing here having this argument, you'd be at OCB headquarters booking him and I'd be standing on the Observation Platform trying to figure out what happened."

"We aren't arguing," Frank said in a soft, sarcastic voice. "For us to be arguing, I'd have to be permitted to say something."

"You'll get your chance, and then we'll be arguing." And Vince felt rather than heard Frank laugh. "So, you think that I'm more important than perfect justice, if arresting Sonny is that. Well, if you believe that, then you have to grant me that not being alone, being with someone who can call me by my name, who knows my history, who knows my life—you have to grant me that being able to live honestly in my own home matters because I say it does. And I can do that with Sonny. There is no one else on earth I can do that with, except maybe Roger for maybe a week or two before he disappears on me and I never see him again. Now, if there's a flaw in any of that, if I've got something wrong, I'd like to hear it."

There was a long silence, then Frank sighed a very deep, very Frank sigh. "No, Vince, much as I hate to say it, I can't see that you've got anything wrong. Steelgrave cares about you—" that was as much of a concession toward love as Frank was ever likely to make "—but then, he always did, and that was always part of the problem. Maybe it's right that that should do you some good for a change. I don't know. I'm not the Grand High Pooh-bah in the Court of Right and Wrong, I'm just your former field supervisor."

"And my friend," Vinnie whispered.

Frank nodded. "And your friend. You make your own decisions." He took a deep breath. "And I make mine. Because I'm your friend, and you are mine. All right?"

Vince didn't say anything for a few seconds, he just nodded. "All right, Frank."

"What," Frank began, his voice now a little hesitant, "are you going to do now? Because it looks like your days of playing Billy and Captain America are over." 

Vince thought that they hadn't ended up so well, thought of his own Butch and Sundance dreams, thought that **they** hadn't ended up so well, either. "I'd tell you, Frank, but then you'd have to kill me." Frank laughed. "Yeah, we found America, all right, and we left it right where we found it. But don't worry, Frank. It'll be all right." Vinnie hoped it was true.

"I want you to do something for me," Frank said.

"Sure, what?" He would have agreed to just about anything at that moment.

"Two things. Get a haircut. Get a shave. And stop smoking so much. Do that for me, OK?" Frank asked him gently. 

Vinnie nodded. "Sure, Frank."

They stood there a while longer. Vinnie asked about Drake, and Frank told him all about his son's aspirations of car ownership, about the girl he had a crush on, and the one who had a crush on him; he talked about normal, happy, family things and Vince stood there and listened until the streetlights started coming on, casting dubious light on the dreary evening. And then they hugged, hard, and went their separate ways.


End file.
